Turn again
by Selective scifi junkie
Summary: Druitt has been living in the Old City Sanctuary for months (to Ashley's frustration) when the team hears reports of a large, carnivorous abnormal roaming the wilds. While trying to capture it, the team is separated and stranded by a storm, all fearing for the others. Magnitt ship (still)
1. Butan-1-ol

**Turn again**

**Summary:**Druitt has been living in the Old City Sanctuary for months (to Ashley's frustration) when the team hears reports of a large, carnivorous abnormal roaming the wilds. While trying to capture it, the team is separated and stranded by a storm, all fearing for the others.

**Rating:**T for threat, mild violence with reference to strong violence (I've written far worse in this series) and leaning more towards romance

**Spoilers: **Assume all of season 1, End of Nights, Eulogy and three of my previous fics: Monster, Freedom, Sleeping Bear (in that order). I will post a summary if anybody asks me to.

**Set: **After my three fics listed above

**Genre:** Basically adventure.

**Disclaimer: **This world belongs to Amanda Tapping, Martin Wood and Damian Kindler.

* * *

"Ashley, take charge." Magnus said, loading her stunner. Ashley nodded.

"OK. Let's split up to search. Mum, with me, Kate, take the guys." Kate nodded and signalled Will and John to move out down the right passage after her. John was semi-competent with a stunner now, though still the worst of the five of them. Ashley signalled left. Magnus followed her.

Ashley kicked the first door they came to open. They swept the room behind it in seconds, synchronised without needing to speak.

"Just like old time." Ashley said, grinning at Magnus. Magnus smiled back. Between Barney's death and Will being competent enough to join them, she and Ashley had done field work alone, coping with whatever the abnormal world threw at them. The next two rooms were clear, and the two after that. They were nearly at the end of their run and there was still no sign of their quarry.

Two cries from ahead, from where their path met the other. Will's voice and Kate's voice.

"Go!" Ashley shouted, bolting for the sound, stunner levelled. Kate and John standing, Will and a large furred form on the floor. Ashley skidded to a halt beside them.

"He didn't tell us Erica was joining in." Kate said, scowling. The HAP on the floor twitched her tail. "They came at us from both sides"

"I'm a casualty." Will put in. "Head-butt counts as a bite and he head-butted me in the shoulder. Would've been a bad bite." Ashley nodded.

"Hold position." She said to John. "Mum, Kate." She signalled the to follow her.

The three of them went fast, room by room, speaking barely a word, following the path Henry must have run. Kate kicked the door of the second to last room, the three of them fanned in. Henry flew at their left flank. All three of them fired. He crumpled

"Are you alright Henry?" Magnus asked. He nodded, but didn't try to get up.

"Setting Erica up as decoy and telling us she wasn't playing." Kate said. "Low Hank. Really low." Ashley shrugged

"It's happened for real before. We've thought there was only one of them, another one jumped on us. Good call Henry."

"Agreed." Magnus said. "Ashley, Kate, go and meet the source regarding those tracks we discussed earlier. Where is he again?"

"Claresholm." Kate sniggered.

"I love having a best friend who can teleport." Ashley smiled. She and Kate set off at a jog. Magnus went to get Will and John. They had lab work to do.

o0o0o0o

"When did you see it?" Ashley asked, falling in to step beside the old farmer.

"With ma own eyes, Lady." He answered. "Twice now, a week back and two nights ago. But there were things before that."

"What did it look like?"

"It were dark, Lady, I couldn't right see it, but it were big."

"Walking on… two legs?"

"Four."

"How big? Bigger than a cow?"

"It weren't much longer, Lady, but it were tall, eight foot in the shoulder and thick. Thicker than the biggest bull I ever saw. Even bigger'n those European Blue things."

"What was its skin like? Scales? Fur?"

"It were too dark to see proper, but if it had fur, it didn't have much." Ashley nodded. Not much to go on.

"The 'things' before..?"

"One o' ma steers dead. And tracks."

"The dead steer?"

"His back end were smashed up like a truck'd gone over it. No guts left at all, blood everywhere."

"Can you show us the tracks?"

"These aren't mammalian tracks." Ashley said, sitting by the tracks twenty minutes later, the farmer had gone back to his work. Kate shook her head in agreement.

"There's not enough water near here for amphibians to breed really."

"So it's a reptile or it's a long way from home."

"Can you think of any species it could be?"

"A few: Redellian, Sêcherest, Baneiren, or something we haven't seen before. But is definitely an abnormal."

"Oh yeah. No way this is a bear."

"So we get this guy's permission to hunt on his land, then go home."

o0o0o0o

"I think we're ready for venom." Magnus said, looking up at John. He looked back at her. The microscopes were ready, the preserved antivenom solutions were a week old, the drexmir venom was waiting in the fridge. Drexmir venom was a strong hallucinogen and it occasionally caused cardiac arrest. Antivenom could be made, but it took too long to be made when someone was bitten and deteriorated very quickly. She and John had been working on a means to preserve it. The only thing they'd found so far was a ketone based mixture, but the vital ketones tended to oxidise the antivenom after a few days. She hoped the Alkaline earth metal salts might save it.

"How hopeful are you?" He asked, handing the vials to her, with a pipette.

"It's hard to say, which salt to use was little more than a guess."

"Onwards blindly then." Magnus smiled, drawing venom in to the pipette.

"Has that ever stopped us before?" John smiled. "Timers ready?" He nodded. "Timer one, go." She dropped the venom in to the first vial and refilled the pipette. They had nine samples to test.

"Five minutes on timer one." John read. "If they're going to coagulate…" Magnus nodded and started to set up a microscope slide of vial one. John waited a few seconds, then copied her for the second sample. Magnus clipped the slide in to place and looked down the lens at it.

"John, what can you see here?" She asked after a moment, stepping aside. John put down his slide and peered down the microscope.

"I see clots, Helen." Magnus nodded, smiling.

"So do I." John looked up and smiled broadly at her.

"Epsom salts and ethanone. An excellent guess." Magnus smiled. Epsom salts. Bits of John's chemistry were a century out of date or more, but he was catching up. He was a fast learner, always had been.

"Magnesium sulphate, John, or no one under the age of seventy will have the faintest idea what you're talking about. Let's see how many other guesses were right."

Three out of nine, as it turned out, were right. Magnus and John were starting to tidy up when Magnus phone rang.

"Mum."

"Ashley, what've you found?"

"Tracks, a half eaten cow… Nothing accurate, but it is an abnormal. Where can we land?"

"Main lab, anywhere outside the robotic assist."

"OK. See you in a sec."

o0o0o0o

Kate followed Ashley down to the armoury in silence, nervous silence. All the time in the lab, briefing Magnus, Ashley'd been wound up and refusing to turn her back to Druitt. Being pissed about him being around hit Ashley like epileptic seizures, randomly and hard. Ashley picked up her radio.

"Henry, get down to the armoury. We've got a hunt."

"Sure, coming."

"He's still here." Ashley said quietly. She wasn't talking about Henry anymore. "He's been clear for two and a half months and he's still here." Kate kept her mouth shut. Ashley grabbed four nine mil pistols off the rack. "He just won't go away. No one's even trying to place him anywhere. He's just… here. And the way he looks at Mum… It's like she could ask him for anything and he'd do it."

"Better that than the other way around, I guess."

"Yeah, but some day he's gonna realise she doesn't love him back and he can't make her by being all chivalrous and docile. When that happens, he's gonna be dangerous." Footsteps outside. Henry entered.

"OK, who's going?"

"The five best shots and Druitt."

"Druitt?" Henry raised his eyebrows.

"Mum wants him for logistics."

"So six of us."

"Yeah."

"Six of us, four pistols."

"I'm using mine."

"No, hold on." Henry raised his hands, six fingers extended. "Your Desert Eagle," He folded one. "Four nine mils." He folded another four and wiggled the remaining one. "Who's this?"

"Druitt's not getting live ammunition."


	2. Butan-2-ol

"Stunners first, live if we're in imminent danger and the stunners aren't working. If we need to bolt, Ashley, you take Will and Henry, John, take Kate and me, unless the storm has got to us and it's generating too much EM." Magnus said, not for the first time, once all six of them were standing beneath the pines, where the freshest known tracks of the abnormal were.

"Going by best to worst shot," Ashley started as Kate and Henry approached the tracks. "wouldn't it be better to swap you and Will?" Magnus frowned.

"That puts first, second and fifth best shots together, then third, fourth and sixth. I don't follow, Ashley." Ashley frowned.

"Oh yeah. Sorry. Never said math was my thing." But there was something odd about the way she said it. That hadn't been her reason. Was she still trying to keep her and John apart? What did she think he'd do?

"Does it smell like anything you recognise, Henry?" She asked.

"No. Not even a bit. I'm not even sure I'm smelling it yet."

"Call yourself a tracker?" Kate asked. Henry smiled.

"Oh, Ash, Druitt, are your EM scales reading the same?" John showed Ashley his mutely. Whatever he said to her, she responded badly or not at all, so he barely spoke to her.

"Yeah." Ashley said. She was tense, tenser than a hunt alone would explain. She had been on the first hunt John had been on too. This was getting ridiculous. John had been in the Old City Sanctuary for more than three months, Ashley was still behaving as though she expected him to attack her, and insisting she wasn't behaving unusually.

The sun sank below the treetops as they walked, faster now, Henry had a strong scent and was almost running some sections. The sun disappeared entirely, the sky turned grey, clouds rolling in.

"This is so much less creepy to do by daylight." Will said, as a distant rumble of thunder started.

"Come on Will, you're getting to be an old hand at this." Magnus said, smiling and brushing her hair out of her face. The wind was getting up.

The rolls of thunder grew louder and more frequent as they went on, distant flashes of lightening could be seen to the South on occasion. John started counting the interval.

"It's one big storm." Kate remarked, when John's count got down to fifteen. It was too dark for her to track now, Henry was fine on his own.

"I am not teleporting anywhere near that thing." Ashley said.

"Probably very wise." John agreed.

By the time John's count had got down to five, it was starting to rain. At a count of three, it was raining hard and lightening flashes lit the sky maybe twice a minute.

"If it gets any wetter I'm gonna lose the scent!" Henry shouted over the thunder.

"We can't teleport now." Ashley shouted back. "Storm's too close."

"Keep trying, Henry." Magnus ordered. He nodded.

"I think it's close, real close."

As Henry turned, his torch beam caught something, something that hadn't been there a minute before, something colossal, something galloping towards them. Henry yelled and dived out of its path. Everyone else opened fire. The abnormal reared and, for a moment, Magnus thought they had it. But it swatted at the stunner blasts as though they were flies, then landed back on all fours. She stood directly before it. There was no cover she could reach that would protect her. However fast she ran, it would run faster. Her only hope was to bring it down before it reached her. She holstered her stunner and drew live, it was already running towards her. Thirty metres. She brought the gun up, twenty, safety off, ten, she shot in to its shoulder, it carried on, it wasn't stopping, she hadn't hit anything important. It was going to crush her. Fire. Pain.

o0o0o0o

Will was firing frantically at the abnormal. It was going to trample Magnus. The stunners weren't doing anything to it. They had to go to live. Lightening lit the sky again and Will saw Magnus throw her stunner aside and reach for her pistol. Druitt was running, but towards the abnormal, not away from it. What?

"Lives!" Ashley roared in to the rain. It wasn't her order to give, it was Magnus's, but Will obeyed. He heard a live shot go of, then saw fire flash in front of the creature. Druitt. Druitt had grabbed Magnus and tried to teleport out. The storm was right on top of them. They could both be dead. But if he hadn't done it, Magnus would have been crushed. That had been suicidaly brave. But Will had known all along that Druitt would take any risk to protect Magnus. The creature staggered and fell on to its side, four people shooting at it now. Ashley sprinted towards its head end.

"Mum!" She turned around. "Mum!"

"She's not here, Ash." Kate shouted through the rain, which was still getting heavier. "Druitt took her. He must have." Ashley tensed.

"She'd be dead if he hadn't Ashley." Will shouted. "We couldn't have brought it down fast enough." Ashley ignored him. He knew she would, she simply could not acknowledge needing Druitt in any capacity. Druitt having saved Magnus, assuming they were alive, was going to make Ashley very angry. Kate walked towards the unmoving abnormal, slowly and from behind.

"It's dead, I think." She called after a moment. "We need to get out of the rain."

"I think I saw a cave a quarter mile back." Henry shouted. Ashley didn't respond. Forked lightening came down somewhere ahead of them.

"Ash, c'mon!" Kate called.

"Magnus wouldn't thank us for putting ourselves in danger when there's nothing we can do!" Will shouted. "You can't teleport now and radios won't work in this." It was still a moment before Ashley nodded and started moving.

Henry's sense of direction was, as usual, perfect, but all four of them were still soaked to the skin by the time they reached the mouth of the cave. Ashley and Kate levelled their stunners again and set about sweeping the perimeter, dripping water everywhere they trod, startling bats once or twice. Will shook his head, feeling weight of the water drag at it.

"I swear I do not get this wet taking a shower." Henry muttered. Will nodded in agreement. He was freezing.

"Nothing else in here right now." Kate called from the far end, starting to walk back towards them, wringing her hair out. "We got lucky."

"Did we?" Ashley asked. No one answered her. Will sat down. Henry and Kate both copied him, Ashley didn't.

"How likely do you think it is that Druitt made it out?" Kate asked after a minute.

"There's no way to know." Henry said. "Druitt has been doing this for a while, maybe you get a feel for it."

"You kinda do." Ashley said. "I feel strong EM fields a little bit now. But if they're OK, where are they? Mum'd have tried to come back and find us."

"Ash, we won't know what happened until the storm clears and we've got radio back." Kate said. "Maybe they just went back to base and they're waiting the storm out."

"But you'd think if they got out, they'd be able to get back." Henry said. Ashley shook her head.

"Not necessarily. Teleporting through EM…" She shook her head. "That's not something I'm ever gonna do again."

"You remember?" Will asked. Ashley nodded.

"Both of us, me and the other mutant, ended up in the same place. I don't know where it was, but it was really cold. We were both injured, really badly, torn open, limbs missing. We didn't feel pain, which was something I guess, but neither of us could teleport and we both knew we needed to kill the other one before they were strong enough to kill us. It felt like it went on for weeks, lying there healing, watching each other, attacking each other, separating, healing again… But I healed faster. It took weeks, it might have been months, but I killed her in the end. Then I went after the Cabal. That's why it took me a while to..." Ashley had been talking at the ground, as though she'd forgotten the rest of them were there. Will glanced around and saw that he wasn't the only one staring at her. That must have been the start of Ashley's truly psychopathic phase, before the schizophrenic stuff had started; voices in her head, social isolation, targeted, remorseless killing…

Ashley shifted, uncomfortable at having revealed so much of a part of herself she guarded so closely.

"Ashley," Will began gently. "The causes for what happened to you are long gone. I know that doesn't change what happened to you, but it does mean that it's over. You're not the same person anymore, that stuff will never hurt you, or anyone else again." For a moment, Ashley didn't reply, then,

"Cut the psycobabble." Just like Magnus. Ashley couldn't accept that she could be helped, she saw that as an admission of weakness. The Magnus women didn't show weakness, wherever Magnus was.

**Please review.**


	3. 2-methylpropan-2-ol

**Long one, I know, but there was nowhere to break this.**

Magnus coughed and gasped. She was flat on her back, water coursing down her face hard and fast. Her whole body stung as though she'd been thrown in to salt water from far above. She felt completely winded. Someone else was coughing close by. A man, by the sound. Lightening lit her eyelids, thunder rolled overhead, almost at once. She rolled over, looking around. John lay on the ground beside her. There wasn't another living creature in sight He'd teleported her away, away from the abnormal's charge.

"John." He looked at her, he'd stopped coughing now. "Are you alright?" He rolled over as she had and pushed himself to his feet.

"I think so. Are you?" Magnus nodded as she got up.

"Where are we?"

"Not where I intended. That's trying to teleport in high EM. I only meant to go twenty yards to the right, to get out of the creature's way."

"I'd be dead if you hadn't. Thank you." John shook his head.

"I think I owe you that much Helen." Magnus reached for her radio.

"Ashley, come in." Static. "Ashley." Still static. "Ashley, can you hear me?" Nothing. "Kate, Will, Henry, anyone?" Nothing. "The storm." She said to John. "So we've no radio, no idea where we are and may I take it teleporting again is a last resort?" John nodded.

"You may."

"Then the best we can do is find shelter and wait the storm out." John nodded again and followed her as she began to walk, her back to the wind so the rain wasn't being driven in to her eyes at least. She wasn't sure she could get any wetter.

Magnus walked on, John like a shadow behind her, soaked to the skin and bitterly cold. She wasn't sure how long it was before John caught her arm and pointed in to the wet dark. Magnus swept her dripping hair off her face and stared. The next flash of lightening showed her what John had seen. Some sort of hut, maybe a hunting lodge, stood among the trees. There was no light inside it. Magnus redoubled her pace towards it, John still at her shoulder, gun levelled. They wouldn't be the only things looking for shelter in this weather. The windows looked smashed out, the door was off its hinges, the place had been deserted a long time. Magnus braved the doorway, casting her torch beam over the interior. Something leapt to its feet and bolted through a window at the far end. A young doe. If that had been in here, there wouldn't be anything dangerous.

Magnus sighed heavily and walked in, water streaming off her. She took off her coat, it was far too wet to be warm, and dropped it, sinking to the floor. John did the same opposite her. The hut wasn't quite wide enough for both of them to fully straighten their legs at the same time. John drew his knees part way in to his chest. Magnus wrung her hair out as best she could.

"Quite a storm." She said. "I hope the others had the sense to go for shelter."

"Having dealt with the creature?" Magnus shook her head.

"That won't take them long. The effect of the stunners may be unpredictable, but plain bullets will bring most things down pretty quickly. It's a crude method, it gives abnormals no chance to answer for themselves, but when we find ourselves in danger, it works."  
"You're not worried at all?"

"Well, shall we say I've more confidence in Ashley's ability to bring down a ton of amphibian than I do her having the sense to go for shelter when the ground is looking increasingly like the bottom of the trenches at Versailles." John looked up at her.

"You were there?" She looked down, closing her eyes for a moment.

"April 1917 to October 1919. I wasn't five miles from where you were stationed."

"And neither of us knew a thing about it." Magnus sighed.

"John, in that hell, names flying past like snow in the wind, wounded men, dying men, dead men all… I don't think reading the name Druitt would have made me suspect it was you.

"I wasn't under my own name. But I think if I had read the name Magnus, I would have remembered." Magnus smiled.

"My name wasn't written much. The other doctors were, I think, upset by having a woman operating on and with men, acting as their equal, nobody's daughter, nobody's wife." John might have frowned in the dark. She couldn't tell.

"I think the surgeons at my post would have been glad of any help at all, as overrun as we were."

"It never stopped, did it?" John shook his head.

"All day, day after day, month after month, year after year, as though it would only end when every man able to stand up and hold a gun on one side or the other was dead. We tried, we tried for all we were worth, but we couldn't keep up. They came in faster than we could treat them, and died waiting for treatment, or after because we were rushing.

"And they were young, to us. Some of them weren't more than boys. Even those that were… I'd known some of them as children. Almost all of them were young enough to be our sons." John looked at her for a moment. Our sons. Your sons and my sons, or our sons? Sons she might have had with him had things been different. John exhaled.

"And you said that our generation was dying all around you by that time." She nodded.

"They were bad years. My father was long gone, by the time the war ended there was only a handful of our generation left, most of them weeping for lost sons. I thought seriously about bearing Ashley then. I felt as though no one was left of my kind."

"What about James and Tesla?" Magnus sighed.

"Yes, James was still there, but only him, and we both knew he could not live forever. Nigel died in 1917, of cancer. We saw less and less of Nicola, maybe for a month every five years at that time. That said, I always had James. You had nobody. How on earth did you bear it?" John shook his head.

"It didn't take me long to realise that I was better off alone. Any companions I had… it, the entity, tended to make me kill them before long. Always excepting you." John fell silent. Magnus had no answer, so after a moment, he carried on. "I think it must have wanted to kill you, desperately but… somehow the thought of killing you made me resist like nothing else. By all logic, by my usual modus operandi, I should have killed you in '88 when you caught me with-"

"And I should have killed you then. You were an abnormal endangering humans. Sanctuary protocol then and now dictates that if I could not have contained you, I should have killed you." John smiled and laughed shortly.

"Your motive was far higher than mine, and you made a fair attempt." He gestured at the scar on his left cheek. Magnus tilted her head at him.

"That was me? I'd have thought it was far more recent."

"No. It was you." She shook her head.

"I'm sorry." He shook his head.

"You did the right thing, Helen. Many's the time I've wished you had succeeded." Helen bit her lip and looked away. She still remembered a proud young man, curious, ambitious, intelligent, determined to be his own person and escape the life laid out for him by his family. That man, that John she could never have imagined wanting to give up his life. "Did you believe you had? Did you find the body in the river?"

"We found him, but James never believed it was you." John sighed.

"I suppose I should have known better than to think I could fool James Watson. My intention was to get you to stop looking for me and disappear."  
"James suspected as much."

"And so The Five began to dwindle." Magnus nodded.

"From '85 onwards, we were only ever going to be equals to, companions for, each other. We were a race apart."

"I think it began before that. If I'd read it, I'd have called it foreshadowing. Don't you remember how we built and craved our separation? How we turned others away, even before we took the sourceblood. We had no idea how long a game we were sitting down to play." He had a point. Of course he did, but the isolation would have been reversible if not for the lifespan she, John, Tesla and, albeit not directly from the blood, James had attained. "Did the four of you continue to disband after...?"

"Not at first. The four of us drew closer, watching each other like hawks for the first year or two. We feared that… it was the sourceblood itself that had… and it just hadn't affected the rest of us yet. Nicola wandered off again, as was and is his habit, so three remained, then Nigel decided that, since he only had one lifetime to live, he would live it as normally as he could."

"So only you and James remained." Magnus nodded. "When did that start?"

"1892 was when – what?" She looked at John blankly. "No. Never, not like that. We were like siblings."  
"Really?"

"Yes."

"I'm surprised, Helen." Magnus opened her mouth to protest, but John cut her off. "Not so much that you and James never… but that you never realised."

"Realised what?" John shook his head.

"For so intelligent a person, you can be remarkably blind. He loved you, Helen, and not as a sister. He desired you as a wife." Magnus shook her head.

"Maybe he did in '84 or '85, but not by '92. He'd long since lost interest. He never gave any sign after you and I began courting in earnest."

"He yielded, Helen. He did not lose interest. He spoke to me alone, shortly after we'd taken the blood, and told me he acknowledged defeat, that he'd lost any hope of having you. He said he'd consider it a fight well fought and lost if I would keep you well and happy all our long lives." Magnus felt the stab of bitterness in John's voice. "In that, I failed miserably."

"It was not your fault." She said firmly. "None of us understood, not even James guessed anything close to the truth." He shook his head.

"I left you pregnant and unmarried, Helen. I destroyed you." Magnus smiled in spite of herself.

"I'm not so easy to destroy. James devised a way of suspending Ashley and we carried on. For a hundred and twenty years, we carried on." She paused for a moment. "Then James died. I had no idea the systems he'd put in place were failing, but he must have known. I never really mourned him. Ashley eclipsed everything else for a long time." She fell silent.

"Then only you remained." John said softly

"Until you came back." He looked up, meeting her eyes, seeking, asking. She met his gaze, unflinching. "Only we remain. The first and last of The Five, a kind apart, alone in the world." For a long moment, neither spoke, just stared at each other, seeking, asking.

"But alone together." John said softly. It was half way to a question. His right hand was resting on his knee.

"Yes. I think we are now." Helen extended her hand towards his. He looked at it, hesitating. She looked back at his face. She couldn't see perfectly, not in this light, but he seemed to be frowning, mouth not quite closed, chest rising and falling faster than sitting still could explain.

He leant forwards and took her hand. It was cold, still damp from the rain, but even blindfolded and deafened somehow she would have known it for his hand. Her skin remembered it, remembered it from a time when even this contact, this nothing, had been walking a line, when they'd have been careful who they did it in front of, when, maybe because of its danger, its forbiddeness, had been enough to set her afire. It had cost her dearly, but, Helen had reasoned before now, it had been worth it. The few glorious years of John's love had been worth the horror of '88, the decades of fear following, and he had given her Ashley. For what they'd had, it had been worth it. Maybe, for John's love, any price was worth paying.

She'd lived a hundred and sixty years, had maybe a score of lovers, none of them had reached her like John had, none of them had ever really understood. Even though the odds had been stacked against him in 1880, John had understood. She'd been an anomaly, many had called her unnatural, a woman who wanted to learn, and wanted to learn sciences at that, but John had understood. He was her first, he'd set a mark no one had ever equalled, let alone surpassed. For all the time that stretched between their last days together and the present, he still had quite an emotional hold on her. The pace and power of her heartbeat just from joining hands with him was a testament to that. For all that had happened, all John had done, or been made to do in the intervening years, all she'd done, a part of her would have been willing to run in to his arms as though it was still the spring of '88.

She looked up at his face. He met her gaze almost at once, a deep, searching look in his eyes. His ice blue stare seemed to pierce her, but it wasn't a threat. His gaze didn't make her defensive like most of its intensity would have done. She just met his gaze, calmly and equally, two wounded old survivors, holding to each other.

She couldn't. Not now. Not after all they'd done, endured, both of them. They were different people now. He'd made his feelings plain, but even so, she couldn't, they couldn't. The lovers they had been in 1885 had died a long time ago. She could not go back. She could not go back to him. She looked down again, breaking his gaze. She couldn't go back.

"Why not?" Helen asked herself silently. "Why can I not go back to John? This is absurd. I am one hundred and sixty years old, head of a global network – no one has the right to tell me what I may and may not do." Defiant pride surged in her, adding to the tumult. She looked up at John again. He hadn't looked away from her. She met his gaze again and held it. She would –

"M-m. M-m c-m –n." Helen started. The sound had come from her radio. "Mum, d- opy?" It was distorted by static from the storm or distance, but it was a voice she'd know anywhere. Magnus let go of John's hand and picked up the radio, getting to her feet.

"Ashley, I hear you."

"Mum." Ashley's voice was still very distorted, but it was comprehensible now. "'Re you OK? What happened?"

"We're fine, darling. The storm must have deflected the teleport, we're still in it, but beyond that, we're not sure where we are. Are you alright?"

"Yeah, fine. I'm just… I'm just glad to hear that you're safe."

"Likewise. Who's with you?"

"Everyone except Druitt."

"He's with me." A brief pause

"Oh." And another one. "What do we do next?"

"What happened to the abnormal?"

"Dead. We killed it just after you disappeared."  
"Would you be able to find the body again?" A moment's pause.

"Henry says he could."

"How's the rain where you are?"  
"Nearly stopped."

"Can you walk back to the body before you teleport home so you can find it again?"

"Sure. The EM's pretty low again over here. How is it where you are?"

"John?" Magnus asked. He sighed softly.

"If I were in any danger, I would risk it, as it is, I would prefer to wait." Magnus nodded.

"We're going to wait a bit longer."

"OK. See you at home?"

"Yes, and Ashley, don't' take risks. If it's not safe to teleport, don't."

"I won't. Over and out."

Magnus stood stock still in the darkness for a long while, as though frozen where she stood. Why couldn't she act? Her feelings for John in the moment before Ashley had radioed had been clearer than they had been since '88, since she'd last been able to love him unreservedly. It was as though Ashley's voice had broken some sort of enchantment. But surely the sound of Ashley's voice couldn't have changed how she felt, she must still feel as she had in that moment, but it was as if her emotions had retreated in to fog, hidden from even her own sight. This was absurd. She was alone with a person she felt, or had felt, desperately powerful love for and she dared not breathe a word of it. What she felt, the bar between what she felt towards John and… action, her consciousness for want of a better word, she had to define as fear. But what on earth was she afraid of? That he'd reject her? She'd been turned down by men before, she could endure that easily. It didn't make any sense.

"Helen." She started. John was getting to his feet. "I think we can leave now." She nodded.

"Thank you." She offered him her arm. She desperately wanted to say something to him, to acknowledge what she'd felt at the very least. She desperately wanted his touch on her arm to mean more. But somehow, she did not dare.

**Are you angry with me?**

**If so, tell me.**


	4. Butanone

**My usual question at this stage: What are my previous three chapter names and what is the problem with the fourth?**

Will stretched and yawned. He badly needed an early night tonight, he'd been almost all of the previous one chasing that huge reptile-thing. He, fortunately, hadn't had to spend too much of today dissecting it. That'd been Magnus, all day, with Bigfoot for most of it, Ashley and Druitt had been in and out. He closed his bedroom door behind himself. The tension between Ashley and Druitt had barely dropped at all in the months since Druitt had moved in permanently and it was still very one-way. Ashley still watched Druitt like he was rabid every minute she was with him and restricted him in any way she had the authority to, like live ammunition, and insisting she could, and would, do any teleportation work that came up. Magnus veto-ed some of that, but not all. Will doubted she was aware of all of it.

Magnus. The tension between her and Druitt since the mission. Something had happened between them, it must have done. There'd been enough time for them to have had sex, but Will doubted it was that. Surely that would have released the tension between them, not intensified it. Was it possible that they'd decided to and Ashley's radio call had interrupted them? They'd have had time to slip off together since getting back now. There'd been a gap of about four hours, according to Ashley, between getting the cadaver back and starting dissection. What if one of them had made an advance and the other had rejected them? That would explain the sky-rocketed tension, the snatched glances when the other wasn't looking. The face masks they had both been wearing all day had made them – already two of the most cryptic people Will knew – even harder to read. The problem with this theory was that Will doubted that Druitt would make any advance on Magnus unless he was pretty sure she'd accept him and he found it even less likely that Druitt had rejected Magnus, he was still madly in love with her. Magnus would have had to call Druitt on, then push him back and that would be unlike her.

Will sighed heavily. Maybe he should just keep his nose out of everyone else's personal lives. He nearly laughed. As if he'd ever manage that. He always wanted to know.

o0o0o0o

To a degree, Magnus felt like she was walking through a dream. The ground beneath her feet was solid, time was passing normally, the bruise on her shoulder from falling when John had teleported her away from the abnormal was sore if she pressed it, but her intent… That felt unreal. She'd dreamed of this, scolded herself for dreaming it, but still she'd dreamed. She'd fallen for him more than a century before, she'd never really regained her feet. She'd pretended, she'd let herself fall for other men in the interim, but he'd always been in her mind, her ghost, her phantom. Helen's heart was beating fast, she had no reason to be sure of his answer, it had been nearly a year, things changed, whatever he'd said. But she was sure. She just knew. She could have radioed him, rather than walking down. Maybe it was the romantic in her, wanting to take her time: there were only a couple of places he could be, there was no hurry.

He wasn't in the library, to her surprise. That left the main lab or his room. The former was more likely. He slept less than she did.

Sure enough, he was there, standing at a work bench, writing something out. He looked up at her when he heard her footsteps. She stopped just at the edge of the circle of light.

"Helen."  
"John." Somehow he knew she wanted him to walk towards her. His face showed nothing but mild curiosity. "John, do you remember when you were first separated from the parasite, you told me that… how you felt about me had never changed. I wanted to ask you if that's still the case." His breath caught in his chest.

"Helen, if you're asking me… Yes. Always." They both drew breath. He spoke before she could. "It doesn't have to cause a problem, Helen. I would hope I'm old enough by now to ignore anything I may feel. Without… I find myself surprisingly easy to control." Helen hesitated, in spite of herself. This was the point of no return, or close to it.

"What if I asked you not to ignore?" He looked at her, more than looked, he looked as though he wanted to see beyond her eyes, as though he could have read her mind through them. "What if I asked you to act on what you feel?" She stepped closer, breaking the barrier of distance she maintained with him, with everyone except Ashley, meeting his gaze, letting him see. John drew breath again. There was a cautiousness to him, a deliberateness in every fibre of his body.

"Helen, please." His tone was one of forced calm. "Stop speaking in riddles." Helen smiled. She'd thought her meaning was quite unambiguous.

"I'm asking for you, John Druitt. I'm asking for you in the same way I did on the sixth of June, 1887, by the gates of my father's house." She remembered, as clearly as though it had been 1987, not the century before. He'd hesitated then too, though she'd known he wanted her, not quite able to believe his senses. The restraint in him was tangible. Enough was enough. She closed the remainder of the distance between them, raised one hand to the side of his neck and kissed him.

It took maybe two seconds for him to respond, as though he'd wanted to reassure himself that she was real. When he did respond, it was well worth the wait. He snaked his arms across her back, pulling her body in to his. She returned the gesture, the pressure of his chest against hers almost painful, but she couldn't let him go, not now, not yet.

They broke apart for breath.

"John." His name felt different in her mouth now.

"Helen." She smiled and took his hands in hers.

"Come with me. Now." She stepped back, as though to lead him. He held on to her.

"Wherever you are going, I can get there faster." His voice had sunk to the low, dark purr she remembered. "And I am… not inclined to wait." She smiled.

"East wing, fourth floor." He returned her smile and pulled her in to the void.

o0o0o0o

John lay still, keeping his breathing as even as he could. Helen's head was on his chest and he didn't want to wake her again. He'd woken her a while before, when the faces of his victims had appeared, as the always did. She'd woken him almost at once, perfectly calm against his terror. She'd held him once he was awake, saying nothing, asking nothing. She knew where his demons hid.

Then they'd remembered why he was in her bed, not his own, and the nature of their embrace had changed. Now that too had passed and Helen had gone back to sleep. John hadn't yet. His mind was racing.

He'd half-expected Helen's advance, but expected it the day before, so had decided to forget it by the time it arrived. Far easier said than done. He had never been able to turn away from her. She'd shown him the siren's call once in 1885. It had never ceased to echo in his mind. He had never been able to resist her. That had not changed in a hundred and twenty years.

John glanced at the clock by Helen's bedside. A quarter to four. Even accounting for the time he had definitely not been sleeping, he must have slept far longer than he usually managed at a stretch. It was usually only an hour or two before his demons returned to wake him. He must have slept almost twice that long in Helen's arms. John smiled in the dark. What Helen did to him… it had always had a quality of an enchantment about it. He had an hour or two yet before she began to wake. He would sleep better here than anywhere else on earth.

o0o0o0o

Will had had a feeling all morning that something was up. It had started as soon as he'd set eyes on Magnus. He couldn't even put words to it really, it was an impression, if that. She's seemed… calmer? No. Magnus rarely panicked. Calm was normal for her, but this morning… she was less… driven? As if the steady focus that usually held her when she was working had slackened. She was more laid back than normal. She'd smiled more easily, she'd been more willing to let them get off topic in the meeting. Will thought Kate'd noticed too, Ashley and Henry seemed oblivious.

Will's feeling that something was up had been turned in to a suspicion by Druitt. There was usually an eerie stillness to Druitt, probably from decades of having to control himself so carefully. He'd fidgeted a bit more this morning, not as much as most people did, but still more than usual.

At seeing Magnus and Druitt together, Will's suspicion had turned in to a theory. Magnus had seemed to spend every moment trying not to smile, with a lot more colour in her face than normal. Druitt had been trying too hard not to look at her. He always looked at her when she was speaking, this morning he'd been making an effort to glance away, and avoiding Will's eye while he did it. Druitt didn't usually do that either.

All that was left was testing his theory. Will had a way in mind, and he could get an opportunity if he tried. But it would take some guts.

Hang it. He'd go mad wondering if he didn't try to find out. He picked up his bundle of files and made for Magnus's office. She should be in there.

He knocked. Magnus looked up from the piles of paper on her desk.

"Come."

"Hey." The trick would be to keep this normal until the last moment. "What's all that?"

"Dissection notes from anything similar to yesterday's abnormal. I'm wondering what to do with it taxonomically."

"OK. I got a bunch of questions. Is now a good time?"

"As good as any. Fire away."

"OK: Sentience evaluators can only specify to one level up from their own, yes?"

"It should be marked "greater than" whatever the sentience level of the evaluator is, but yes."

"And following that, psyc. Evaluation has to be done by… equal or greater level than the patient?"

"Unless the patient is a level six."

"Because there are so few level sixes?"  
"Correct."

"OK. If the patient is psychologically influential?"

"Any assessment is invalid until appropriate counter measures have been taken."

"How old is that rule?"

"'07. 1907 that is."

"OK. At what sentience level does psyc evaluation get replaced by behavioural?"

"Three and below is behaviour."

"So what happens with something like Nubbins?"

"Will would you attempt a psychological evaluation on a Nubbin?"

"No. Stupid question. Sorry. The threshold value for Cobalt in Kequanthrir food is 0.25mg per day. Is that a min or a max."

"Minimum."

"What's the combination on the meds safe in store 3?"

"00-19-51."

"Where do you file non-sentient hybrids?"

"By known parent, if there is one."

"Do I need to retro-date psyc. exam reports?"

"Yes."

"Did you sleep with John Druitt?" Magus was a fraction too slow putting her poker face together. As soon as she'd got herself together enough to look incredulously at him, "Sorry. I was dared to do that?"

"I thought you were too grown up to take stupid dares Will." He shrugged. He'd been right. She'd have denied it aggressively even after he'd taken it back if she hadn't.

"So did I, but…" She raised her eyebrows at him.

"Who dared you?" Oops. He hadn't thought this far. He shook his head.

"I claim the right to remain silent." Neither spoke for a second. "C'mon Magnus, it was a stupid dare. You're big enough to take it."  
"Do you have any other… genuine questions Will?"

"No, but Angie said she's ready to talk to you about surgery for her ear."

"You got her past her fear of anaesthesia?"

"Sort of. I just said to her that-" Will looked straight at Magnus and held eye contact, for the first time since he'd walked in. "that sometimes there are things that need looking at, dealing with, and we try to ignore them. Sometimes they go away, sometimes they don't. But if they don't, the longer you leave them, the bigger they get and the more courage it takes to even say they're there. But when you do, it's better for everyone." He looked down. "That's all." He turned and walked out.

"Thank you Will." She called after him.


	5. Epilogue

**Thank you to all of you for sticking with me for four fics. **

**The chapter names of the first three chapters, by the way, are primary, secondary and tertiary alcohols of four-carbon chains. Quaternary alcohols aren't possible, since Carbon can only bond to four things, and one of them has to be the alcohol group for it to count, so for chapter 4, I resorted to a ketone, still with four carbons.**

Ashley roared. Her foot went straight through the wall of the crate behind her and snagged on the broken wood as she withdrew it. She squared herself, panting. There were bits of broken stuff lying all around her. That happened when she got mad. And she was mad. Really mad. She curled forward and bellowed. Why? Why had Mum done that? Ashley kicked again. How could she have gone back to him? After everything he'd put her through… He'd promised to marry her, they'd been engaged, then he'd started killing. No, of course, it hadn't been his fault. Of course it had all been the entity. Of course the owner of the hands that'd strangled and cut hundreds of helpless women for a hundred and however many years wasn't dangerous to let loose, not even a bit. But you'd have thought he'd have asked for help. If a guy who people said was completely harmless started killing people, hell, even thinking about killing people, if he happened to have a bunch of friends who were experts in the unexplained, you'd have thought he'd have told them and asked for help. But no. He'd just carried right on and killed. Ashley scuffed at the bits of wood on the floor. Two went flying. And he'd left her pregnant. 1888, England. That world wasn't good to single women with kids. He'd just left her like that and disappeared. Ashley scuffed again.

Why couldn't it have been Uncle James? Mum and Uncle James had been best friends for decades, they'd have done anything for each other. Mum had said before that the best basis for a relationship with a guy was friendship, but apparently spending a hundred years keeping a guy away, like putting an EM field round the house to keep just this one guy out, was also OK.

A high metallic squeal. The door of the warehouse. Ashley froze, listening. Someone else was here. Her hand hovered over her Desert Eagle.

"Ash?" Kate's voice. Ashley scowled. What was she doing in here? Wasn't it obvious that if she went to the condemned sector without telling anyone where she was going that she didn't want company? Footsteps. Kate was walking in to the building. "Ash!" Ashley stayed still and silent. "Ash, c'mon. I know you're in here. I heard you." Ashley sighed. She had three choices. She could tell Kate to shove off, she could teleport away or she could go to her. Kate wouldn't just leave, she was way too stubborn. "Ash!" Kate called again.

"'m here." Ashley called back, starting to walk towards the door Kate had come through. "What d'you want?" Kate looked down at the plastic bag in her left hand. Ashley looked questioningly at her.

"Bag of cookies, two tubs of Ben and Jerry's and a bottle of wine." Kate walked over to a shipping crate and sat down against it. She looked back at Ashley. "Come on." Ashley hesitated, then flopped down next to Kate. Kate reached in to the bag and pulled out two mugs and two spoons. She put one of each in Ashley's hand. "Chocolate Fudge Brownie or Baked Alaska first?"

"Chocolate." Ashley said. Kate pulled the lid off the ice cream tub and set it down between them.

"Dig in."

**Thanks to my beta (my Mum) for getting me to pen fanfic at all and being enthusiastic enough about this plotline to keep me writing it. Thanks to the creators of Sanctuary for giving us this world to play with. Thanks to God, for creating the world and everything in it and for dying to save me, and anyone else who trusts in him.**


End file.
